PROJECT returns this year with new skins and a new process for joining the First Strike to unlock unique borders for loading screen cards.

As you may have noticed on PBE, we’ve modified the Hextech Crafting system to prepare for First Strike with two new limited-time crafting materials. Introducing PROJECT Cores and blueprints:

EXHIBIT A // PROJECT CORE

EXHIBIT B // BLUEPRINTS

PROJECT Cores fuse with blueprints to unlock various types of loot. Certain blueprints allow you to craft First Strike icons for PROJECT: Ashe, PROJECT: Ekko, and PROJECT: Katarina, which you will need to secure First Strike borders for their loading screen cards.

These new and existing crafting materials reside in a variety of caches that you can purchase for IP or RP. Caches are similar to Hextech chests but do not require a key to open.

EXHIBITS C-G // CACHES

In our efforts to make gemstones directly purchasable, we’re also guaranteeing one per day in special bundles for the first six days of this operation.

We’ll dive deeper into this process with an FAQ in the near future. Stay tuned!

[ Reminder ] The PBE is a testing ground for changes. What you see here may not reflect what you see in Patch Notes. Remember that developers want your feedback so if you disagree with a change, you can always submit your thoughts on the PBE Community Forums.

PROJECT: Ekko, Ashe & Katarina have received their limited loading screen borders; no news on how to obtain them yet, but if the promo is identical to last year’s, you’ll get them for purchasing the PROJECT skins during the first week of sales.

PROJECT: Yasuo has also received a limited-edition border; no news on how to get it yet (speculation: the skin will go on sale and everyone who buys it or has bought it before the sale ends will get the border).

The existing PROJECT skins received updated to their limited-edition borders; the stylized inner border now wraps tighter around the picture.

Left side: OLD, right side: NEW –

Prowl [ Passive ]

Bushwhack [ W ] no longer triggers the Hunt debuff;

The duration of the Movement Speed buff when Hunting while in Cougar form has been increased from 2 seconds to 4.

Javelin Toss [ Q ]

Minimum base damage increased from 60/77.5/95/112.5/130 to 70/85/100/115/130 (maximum base damage has likewise been adjusted from 180/232.5/285/337.5/390 to 210/255/300/345/390).

[ Reminder ] The PBE is a testing ground for changes. What you see here may not reflect what you see in Patch Notes. Remember that developers want your feedback so if you disagree with a change, you can always submit your thoughts on the PBE Community Forums.

PROJECT: Ashe

PROJECT: Ekko

PROJECT: Katarina

Winter’s Bite [ Q ]

Base damage decreased from 70/115/160/205/250 to 60/105/150/195/240.

Gatling Gun [ E ]

No longer reduces Armor/MR per hit, to a cap of 4/8/12/16/20 l instead, Gatling Gun now decreases Armor/MR by 10/15/20/25/30 after it hits an enemy 8 times;

Counter for Gatling Gun stacks now resets 4 seconds after the enemy stops getting hit by it, increased from 2.

[ Reminder ] The PBE is a testing ground for changes. What you see here may not reflect what you see in Patch Notes. Remember that developers want your feedback so if you disagree with a change, you can always submit your thoughts on the PBE Community Forums.

[ Reminder ] The PBE is a testing ground for changes. What you see here may not reflect what you see in Patch Notes. Remember that developers want your feedback so if you disagree with a change, you can always submit your thoughts on the PBE Community Forums.

Bonus shield per nearby ally increased from 20/30/40/50/60 to 20/40/60/80/100.

Armor decreased from 27 [+3.25 per level] to 20 [+3.5 per level].

Wolf’s Frenzy [ W ]

No longer passively heals;

New Passive: Wolf’s attacks against jungle monsters now slow their Attack Speed and Movement Speed by 50% for 2 seconds.

Base Movement Speed increased from 325 to 330;

Base Mana increased from 292.4 to 350.

Glitterlance [ Q ]

Slow duration increased from 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds to 2 at all ranks;

Targets beyond the first take 70% of Glitterlancer’s damage.

Whimsy [ W ]

Now additionally grants 15/20/25/30/35% bonus Attack Speed for the duration of the MS buff.

Ravenous Flock [ R ]

Cooldown increased from 10 seconds at all ranks to 20.

An Acquired Taste [ Passive ]

New Passive: Tahm Kench’s basic attacks and spells now deal an additional 1/1.25/1.5% (values for levels 1/11/16) of his Maximum Health as bonus magic damage. This value stacks up 3 times (up to 3/3.75/4.5%) against enemy Champions.

Tongue Lash [ Q ]

Base damage increased from 80/125/170/215/260 to 80/130/180/230/280.

Thick Skin [ E ]

Cooldown decreased from 16/15/14/13/12 seconds to 6 seconds at all ranks;

Passive now stores 70/75/80/85/90% of damage dealt as gray health, decreased from 100%;

Gray health now returns 25/30/35/40/45% of its value back as normal health, increased from 20/26/32/38/44%;

Duration of active shield decreased from 6 seconds at all ranks to 3, but the shield no longer degenerates over the duration.

Abyssal Voyage [ R ]

Passive removed (replaced with a weaker version in the Acquired Taste changes);

Cast range on active increased from 4000/5000/6000 to 4500/5500/6500;

Maximum channel duration decreased from 15 seconds at all ranks to 6;

Delay on recast and time for warning ping to appear are both decreased by 0.5 seconds.

Damnation [ Passive ]

Dragon and Baron now drop 2 souls, up from 1.

Dark Passage [ W ]

0.5 AP ratio removed; instead, each soul grants Dark Passage one more point of shields.

Health decreased from 1.89 [+0.17 per level] to 1.2 [+0.15 per level].

Heya everyone, it’s been a lo~ong time since we’ve dropped a brand new mode, as we were busy building the RGM queue! To top it off, Nexus Siege is probably one of the biggest modes we’ve ever attempted making.

You came here to get details. ^_^ Let’s go.

Nexus Siege

TL;DR:

Nexus Siege is a round based attack & defense game mode, where teams take turns at sieging the enemy’s Nexus using an arsenal of deadly new Siege Weapons. The team who destroys the enemy’s Nexus in the fastest time wins!

Each team will take turns at sieging the enemy team’s base. Team 1 will set a time for destroying the enemy Nexus, then teams will swap sides. The longer Team 2 can hold out and defend, the more time they give themselves to push when its their turn to attack! If they can destroy the enemy nexus faster than Team 1 did, they win!

Siege Warp trinket and teleporting:

Both team have a variety of teleport pads to warp out to from fountain. Use the Siege Warp trinket to get into battle faster!

Crystal Shards:

This currency is the fuel for your siege Attack or Defense. All new Siege Weapons are purchased using Crystal Shards. Earn them by:

Attack side:
— Kill enemy champions
— Passively earned over time

Defense side:
–Kill enemy champions
–When the 1st tower in each lane is destroyed
–For each minion escorted and pushed into the enemy fountain
–Passively earned over time

Normalised EXP & Gold:

Gold & EXP are normalised for Nexus Siege across both teams. This means don’t worry about last-hitting, just push those minions as fast as you can!

Obliterator (Defense team only):

The Defense team is rewarded everytime they manage to safely escort and push a minion into one of the Attacking team’s fountains. If they can push 15 total minions up there, they trigger the Obliterator laser.

The Obliterator will kill all enemies in all lanes. All of them. Dead.
Very dead.
No seriously, get out of the lane if you’re not on the Defense team. :3
This is also a great lane reset for the Defending team, buying them precious extra minutes to stall.

Siege Weapons:

Both the Attack and Defense teams have 4 unique Siege Weapons they can purchase using Crystal Shards they earn during the game. All Siege Weapons use the Summoner Spell slot and are cast or deployed similar to Summoner Spells. You can carry up to 2 different Siege Weapons at once, and they do not stack in your Summoner Spell inventory (1 at a time). As you might have guessed, this also means there are NO Summoner Spells in Siege Mode. 🙂

Attack:

Siege Ballista

A long ranged siege engine that will hammer away at enemy towers. These are excellent for applying pressure on defending teams who continually turtle and never come out from under their towers.

Attach to a nearby tower giving you control of 3 beam blasts from the tower. This does SERIOUS damage to enemy champions. ‘Ruinate’ your enemies. Do it. 🙂

Tower Surge: Firestorm Bulwark

An emergency Zhonya style shield for your tower that makes it invulnerable for a few seconds, then WRECKS all enemies that were around it in a rain of missiles. Great for clutch saves on a tower about to go down, buying you precious extra time.

Entropy Field

Freezes all enemy minions and slows all enemy champs within it’s zone. Can completely change the balance of a team fight.

Flash Zone

Throw down a large area that gives all allied champions inside the zone unlimited Flash on a 1sec cooldown. Great for team engages or reaching hidden nests of Siege Ballistae.

We won’t be immediately turning this mode on for PBE, but it will be coming soon. As you guys can see, there’s A LOT we need to get through for testing, so once we flip it on all help is appreciated. <3

Let the siege begin. 🙂
— L4T3NCY

EDIT: Nexus Siege is now live for testing on PBE.

Known Bugs:
— Placeholder icons. There are many icons around the shop, siege weapons, buff bar, etc that are clearly placeholder. These will be updated as we go.
— Placeholder or missing sounds. There are a variety of sound FX that are still WIP or missing, these will be updated as we go.
— Titan bar icon for Crystal Generator will be removed. Ignore this feature.
— Shopkeepers are missing after the round swap. We’re still figuring out where they went (short vacation?)
— Siege Weapons in shop that you can’t afford aren’t correctly grey out, indicating that you can’t currently afford them.
— General performance. Low spec machines might struggle somewhat as we continue to optimise the mode’s visuals.
— End of Game screen has some new columns in it unique to Nexus Siege, but they are not yet hooked up and will look empty.
— Spectator. Various spectator bugs.

Two weeks ago, we confirmed we’re not bringing back solo queue and promised to do a better job of keeping you updated about our ongoing efforts to improve ranked.

So let’s talk about what we’re doing to address three specific issues:

Recognition for skilled solo play in dynamic queue

Opportunities for ranked fives

Matchmaking problems including queue times for high MMR players and improved odds for everyone to get their primary role

Individual achievement isn’t given the same recognition in Dynamic Queue, and this has left some solo-only players feeling disenfranchised. We’re shipping a feature in 6.13 that ought to help: ranked emblems.

The goal is to give you another tool (alongside your rank and champ masteries) to show what sort of player you are. We’ll track your win history and premade size, and once you reach 25 wins in Dynamic Queue you’ll earn either a Solo Emblem, a Dynamic Emblem, or a Team Emblem. The emblem you earn is based on the way you’ve queued up for your previous 25 wins, and you can only have one emblem at a time. Emblems have no impact on matchmaking, but they’ll show up on the ladder and will be accessible to third-party tracking sites through our API.

So how do you know which emblem you’ll get after 25 wins?

Solo Preference Emblem: Queue alone for most of your games

Dynamic Preference Emblem: Queue with varying team sizes for most of your games

Team Preference Emblem: Queue with full teams for most of your games.

The ranked emblems system isn’t retroactive, so it’ll begin awarding emblems based on the first 25 wins you get after it launches.

With solo queue gone, there needs to be better recognition of individual achievement. We’re committed to solving this problem, and we think this implementation of ranked emblems probably won’t completely solve this issue for the players who are least happy with dynamic queue. We’re seeing emblems as one step towards a better system, not as the end-all-be-all solution to the problem. We want to see how this is received before we move on to other options (and we are looking at other options).SCHEDULED RANKED 5v5 TEAMS

We disabled ranked teams at the start of the season because we were unsure how match quality would be affected by the addition of dynamic queue. Now that we’ve limited high MMR players (Diamond 5+) to solo, duo, or trio queues, those players have no option to play ranked as a group of five. Even among the much larger population of players who fall below Diamond 5 (about 99% of all players), we’ve heard that people miss the ranked 5v5 queue. They miss the unique challenge of managing a consistent ranked team without the constraints of tier restrictions. Queue population issues prevent us from bringing back a permanent ranked fives queue, because we can’t guarantee reasonable queue times in off-peak hours. Instead of giving up on ranked fives, we want to try a potential solution: scheduled ranked 5v5 teams.

Other than the fact that this queue will not be available 24/7, it’ll function exactly like the old ranked 5v5 teams queue did. We’re still evaluating exactly what time and days for each region make sense, so look for more info on this in the coming weeks.QUEUE TIMES AND POSITION SELECT

Queue times have been far too long for high MMR players. As part of our ongoing efforts to solve this, we introduced an autofill mode that triggers when we expect position select to lead to unacceptably high queue times. Our initial data shows that high MMR queue times have improved dramatically, and most players in Master and above are only ever impacted by autofill once every ten games. Here are more specific stats:

You’ll notice that queue times for everyone under Diamond tier have actually gone up slightly. This has nothing to do with our tuning of the autofill feature. Instead, this is a trade-off we’re making to increase the likelihood you’ll receive your primary role in champ select. Regardless of your ranking, you should have a better chance to get your primary position.

These are great gains, but what about the criticisms against autofill? The autofill feature undermines one of the main promises of new champ select—that you’ll get the role you want. This is undeniably true. Forcing players into autofill means they’ll sometimes get stuck in their weakest role, and this makes climbing into the highest ranks as a one-trick or mid-only player much harder.We’re okay with this right now for two reasons: 1) It’s necessary to get high MMR queue times down and improve matchmaking quality, and 2) Players dealt with an even more drastic form of randomized role selection for years in the previous champ select process. The high queue times and matchmaking inequalities we’ve been dealing with resulted from our switch to new champ select with its position-select features.

But we aren’t willing to give up the gains that new champ select brings us—it’s still awarding high MMR players their desired role at a much higher rate than what players were used to with last season’s ranked draft pick. Instead, we’ll continue making adjustments and improvements that minimize the irritation of not getting your preferred role.

The shift to dynamic queue is about reinforcing League as a team game, so organized team play needs to be much, much easier than it is now. We need to offer the right platforms, tools, and team-finding capabilities to stand behind League as a team sport. We’re not there yet, but we’re determined to do the work get there.

This is an iterative process. We’ll keep communicating specific details about our plans for improving ranked, and we’ll be honest about what’s working and what isn’t. Ultimately, we’re aiming to give every type of player (including solo only players, high MMR folks, and people who are currently happy with dynamic queue) the best League experience possible.

It’s been about a month since the Mid-Season changes went out, and we’d like to share some thoughts on how things are looking. We’d also like to talk a little about what we’ve got planned for the next little while, gameplay-wise. In other words, we’ll be talking about champions, items, jungle objectives, and so on, but not features like the new client, matchmaking, skins, etc.The Game Right Now:

Dragons

We’re happy with the elemental dragons so far, both the amount they’re fought over and the variety they create game to game.

We’ve seen some clarity issues with the runes in the dragon pit and the scoreboard icons, recent changes seem to have mainly addressed those issues though.

We have been getting a lot of feedback that the Cloud buff is weak. Looking at how each buff contributes to a team’s chance of winning the game, however, tells us the buffs are statistically pretty close to each other. We’re looking atappreciability of what each buff gives you at present as a result, rather than adding or removing raw power.

The Cloud buff is also the most execution-dependent buff, empowering coordinated teams in particular, so we also want to see how it performs in pro play before considering any possible changes. Power adjustments might be appropriate at some point, right now we don’t think they’re the right tool to be looking at though.

Rift Herald

So far we’re seeing Rift Herald be impactful when it’s taken. It noticeably increases a team’s odds of winning, but not to the extent of one of the dragon buffs.

Shifting to a single spawn, extremely long buff duration approach also seems to have created more interesting decisions around when to take it and who to give it to, which was one of our primary goals behind the changes.

A lot of teams have been slow to pick up on the Rift Herald changes, and so aren’t yet taking it when they should though. That’s not unexpected, given it takes a while for playstyles to adjust.

We don’t have any changes planned for Rift Herald at present, keeping a close eye on it though.

Mages

We’re getting individual champion balance under control again post Mid-Season, which should put us in a position to get a better read on how the kit changes (from a non-power perspective) are playing out.

Some of the kit changes look pretty successful so far (e.g. Malz passive creating a healthier playstyle or Zyra capturing more of a plant queen feel).

Some are still under assessment (Brand, for example looks reasonable but we just haven’t seen enough play on him yet to judge success or not).

Vel’Koz at least doesn’t seem to have hit the mark, with his ability to pull of a successful ultimate too restricted by the changes. We’re making some follow up changes to him as a result, allowing his ult to again contribute some stacks towards his passive.

AP Items

Are performing as hoped so far. We are still seeing a lot of shifts in terms of which AP champions are popular though, and which items get built. We’re waiting for longer term patterns to emerge as a result, so far things seem reasonable though.

Protobelt looks weak, but we’d rather start low, and buff where needed, given the potential power a dash on an item involves.

Long term, we’d like to add another AP+20% CDR item that fills a clearly different niche than Morello’s. Goal there would be to offer more build flexibility (old Athene’s, by contrast, was too heavily overlapped with Morello’s, with one of the two items always dominating the other for most champions).

Taliyah

Early days for her yet, particularly given she’s got a noticeable learning curve.

She seems to be doing the desired sort of things, although it also looks like she’s a bit underpowered on average. Her performance when played by people with a lot of experience on her is pretty reasonable, however. We’re going with two sets of small buffs as a result, checking between each to make sure we’re not overdoing it.

Taric

Has settled into a reasonable spot. Main issue at present is that his ult’s still too hard to make out in busy fights, despite some visual improvements in 6.10. We’ve got further adjustments in 6.11 as a result that will hopefully address the problem.

We’ll also be investigating some form of universal ‘this champion is invulnerable and won’t take damage at present’ visual language at some point to make it easier to tell at a glance who’s currently immune to damage (Taric ult, Trynd ult, Kindred ult etc).

Death Timers

Seem to be around the right length post mid-season changes. We are seeing some games stretch out, with a few more back and forth stalemates. Some of those are slower games, some are pretty action filled, so that’s a reasonable-but-could-be-better outcome from our perspective (stringing a lot of words together there).

We’re not seeing as many ‘Clean up 5 turrets and the nexus from a single teamfight before super late game,’ however, which is a clearer win.

Towers

Look noticeably more lethal early game and a bit tankier overall. They haven’t changed dramatically, which is as intended. We didn’t want to kill early diving completely or substantially increase laning duration or overall game time.

Jungle Camp Timers

We’re still assessing these. Our primary goal with the addition of the timers was to encourage more conflict around the red and blue buff camps, and we are seeing that occur. We’re still determining whether the timers shut down some types of jungler too much, however. That’s a concern that was raised before the timers’ release that we’re still seeing some ongoing discussion about.

The other concern we’ve seen raised a fair bit is that these timers dumb down the game. Our feeling is that they shift mastery from one action to another. Without the timers, players were being tested on their ability to determine blue/red respawn times by noticing when enemy champions had red or blue buff then using the remaining buff duration to determine the next camp spawn time. With buff timers, that’s no longer a point of mastery. There is more focus and need to deal with invades, or the threat of invades, which tests a different set of skills. If we’re comfortable with the above point (do timers overprioritize certain junglers?), we’re okay with this skill tradeoff.

Future Gameplay Plans:

We’ll be making balance changes in the upcoming patches as usual. We’ve also got some points of focus for the next little while too. We’re currently in an unusual place where we’re able to talk with a fair bit of confidence about some of our upcoming gameplay plans, so we’re trying that out as an experiment. It won’t be something we can do all the time, however, as work is generally too fluid in terms of exactly what’s in a patch or sometimes even which piece of work will be ready for release first.

It’s also important to note that these are planned, not guaranteed. It’s still possible things might change.

6.12

Changes to a few champions, items and systems on ARAM.

Champion Mastery on both Howling Abyss and Twisted Treeline.

Adjustments to around half a dozen items, most of them regularly used by marksmen, with the goal of restoring some balance between Ghostblade/Black Cleaver and other builds on some champs.

6.13

A focused patch on the support position, looking at things like support XP, tweaks to a few items that aren’t hitting the mark (e.g. Ruby Sightstone or Forbidden Idol), small buffs to some champs that often go support, etc.

This is not a large class update like the one we recently did for mages, but instead a collection of small changes we can get out quickly.

Improvements to how Champion Mastery Grades are calculated for supports.

6.14 – 6.15

Balance, with some focus on Worlds Qualifiers. Qualifiers are expected to be mainly played on 6.15, so we’ll have a number of pro play focused changes in 6.14, with 6.15 a smaller patch (gameplay-wise) with time put aside to address any unintended effects from 6.14.

Potentially some ARAM followup work too, depending on whether we see any major emergent issues after the 6.12 changes.

6.16-6.18

Balance, with a focus on Worlds. Similar pattern to the qualifiers, with changes more pro play focused than the rest of the year in 6.16+6.17. 6.18 is set aside in large part for followup on any issues introduced in the previous two patches.

Somewhere in that run of patches

The Ryze update (full visual, audio overhaul, plus some kit changes that have a focus on balanceability, game health and distinctiveness)

At least one new champion.

And of course plenty of other things that are outside the topic of this post.

And that’s about it for this State of the Game – we’ll see you next time. Let me know on the Dev Corner what else you’d like to see from these, and we’ll be around to answer questions there.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at @NoL_Chefo or e-mail me at nolchefo@gmail.com.